British Academics Blockade Occupations Educators

James Meikle | The Guardian | 31 May 2007 http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/worldwide/story/0,,2091769,00.html

University lecturers threatened yesterday to provoke international condemnation by forcing their union into a year-long debate over boycotting work with Israeli universities.

Delegates at the first conference of the new University and College Union in Bournemouth voted by 158 to 99 for "a comprehensive and consistent boycott" of all Israeli academic institutions, as called for by Palestinian trade unions in response to Israel's "40-year occupation" of Palestinian land.

The union's leadership must now circulate calls from Palestinians for a boycott of Israeli universities to all branches throughout the country.

Last Friday morning I drove to the Palestinian village of Bil'in. Bil'in, the village that has turned into a symbol of the struggle against the Apartheid Wall and against the confiscation of Palestinian land by fraudulent Jewish real-estate sharks who hide behind fake patriotism. Bil'in, a Palestinian village geographically close to Tel Aviv and central Israel and to call the fake leftists who inhabit Tel Aviv's coffee shops. ...more